The New and Improved Romie Futch

August 10, 2015
Displaying the same dark whimsy of her acclaimed short story collection, The Wilds, Elliott’s first novel is a farce about a South Carolinian taxidermist hunting a mutant boar. Turning to the bottle and neglecting his business after his wife leaves him, Romie Futch answers an ad looking for subjects willing to receive “pedagogical downloads” consisting of the OED, Thomas Bernhard, and Derrida, and a number of other abstruse works. Like most liberal arts educations, Romie’s comes at an exorbitant cost: putting himself at the mercy of Biofutures, the sinister “mega-conglomerate” running the experiment. Upon his release, the “new and improved” Romie tries his hand at art, constructing a series of “postnatural taxidermic dioramas” that feature mutated animals he captures in the vicinity of a toxic waste dump. He soon develops an Ahab-like obsession with a monstrous, genetically altered pig known as Hogzilla, “winged and bald, nightmare beast of the future.” Though there is never a dull moment, the bursting narrative generates a sense of fatigue as we follow Romie’s mock-epic quest, desultory attempts to throw light on the shady Biofutures, and foray into conceptual art. The novel’s neatest trick is aligning Romie’s distress over his own future, which once seemed so boundless, with broader anxieties about what environmental and technological monstrosities the 21st century may bring.

August 1, 2015
This first novel from Elliott (The Wilds, 2014) blends dystopia and Southern Gothic. Taxidermist Romie Futch has spent his life with deadbeat dudes who like to drink-you know, people like him. Still smarting from the breakup of his marriage and needing some money, Romie signs up for a medical experiment at the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta: he and his fellow subjects get all of the humanities uploaded to their brains. Soon, Romie and his new pals are discussing the highfalutin in the only vernacular they know: "Fuck that punk Derrida. Got game in his flow but no heat." This, essentially, is the joke of the novel's first third, and it wears a little thin. But when Romie leaves the center, Elliott tells a bizarre (and bizarrely moving) story about how he tries to put his life back together. Dreaming of an art career, Romie hunts squirrels, stuffs them, and makes them into dioramas illustrating Foucault and Bentham's concept of panopticon. Soon, he's hunting bigger animals, using the head of a wild swine to dress himself as "Lord Tusky the Third, a lean and refined gentleman with the head of a boar." (This is Elliott at the height of her absurdity.) Eventually, Romie becomes obsessed with killing a mutant hog nicknamed "Hogzilla" (with, yes, plenty of Ahab references). How does all of this hang together? Surprisingly well, mostly because Elliott uses Romie's heartbreak to underpin all the action, no matter how silly it gets. It's not a perfect novel, but it's always energetic. At its worst, it feels like an author showing off, in love with her central concept like a parent who can't stop talking about her kids on Facebook. Then again, as this novel reminds the cynical, seen-it-all reader, sometimes strangeness is enough. Elliott's work, in its own snarling and unruly way, contains brilliance.

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Starred review from November 1, 2015

Divorced from beautiful Helen and barely clinging to his business, washed-up South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch hangs out mournfully with other loser friends. Then he answers an ad placed by the Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, located in Atlanta, which is seeking research subjects willing to have humanities data downloaded into their brains. In a bid to remake his life, Romie signs up and is soon using language that might stump a Ph.D. But all does not go as planned, starting with his homecoming blackout. Then there's the 1,000-pound hogzilla, another victim of lab intervention now marauding through the countryside, that Ronnie aims to bring down. VERDICT A send-up of self-improvement schemes and self-serving science, this wise and funny book by Elliott (The Wilds) treats its characters tenderly and glimmers at the end.

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